Peter Lucas: Trump protesters paid provocateurs without a cause

Back in the day, Chicago's finest would have broken a few heads at the anti-Trump protest rally that shut down his appearance in Chicago the other day. But times have changed.

The Chicago cops don't club unruly demonstrators -- or reporters -- anymore, certainly not the way they used to in the free-swinging, good old days.

I'm talking about the weeklong, bloody anti-Vietnam War demonstration/riot at the Democrat Party Convention in Chicago in 1968. That was when thousands of protesters, intending to shut down the convention, battled daily with the cops and armed soldiers for control of the streets.

Chicago was torn apart. Some 6,000 armed National Guard soldiers were called in to augment the Chicago police. Hundreds of soldiers with rifles lined Michigan Avenue to face off with thousands of demonstrators throwing bottles and rocks.

On several occasions, Chicago police openly clubbed hundreds of demonstrators and arrested hundreds more. Tear-gas canisters were liberally fired into the ranks of the demonstrators as soldiers wearing gas masks beat back protesters.

That happened not once, but nightly, for a week. Chicago was a war zone. The demonstrators were furious in their opposition to the war and the Democrat Party's support of President Lyndon Johnson's war policy.

And their fury rocked Chicago, the Democrat Party and the country. I know because I was there covering the riots for the Boston Herald, where I worked.

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I also had recently returned from Vietnam.

The Medical Committee for Human Rights treated more than 1,000 demonstrators for injuries, while the hospitals treated 111 more serious cases. Chicago police reported 192 officers injured, 49 of whom needed hospital treatment. There were some 700 arrests.

In that same week, 308 Americans were killed in combat in Vietnam and 1,114 wounded in a senseless war. In May, more than 2,000 Americans were killed in combat, the highest monthly loss of the war.

At that point, the U.S., under President Johnson, had 542,000 troops in Vietnam, fighting a war that deeply divided the nation. While the vast majority of young men accepted their draft notices and served, many others burned their draft cards or headed for Canada, or both.

In addition to the fury over the war, riots broke out in scores of cities across the nation when the Rev. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4. Two months later, on June 5, U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, running for president, was also assassinated in Los Angeles.

And then, with the country already torn apart, came the riotous demonstrations at the convention in Chicago. It was not a good year.

The cops, the soldiers and the establishment Democratic Party won the battle of Chicago. The convention was not shut down. But the establishment lost the war. The Democrats nominated Vice President Hubert Humphrey for president, who was tied to Johnson's war policy. Humphrey was defeated in the election by Republican Richard Nixon, and the war went on for another six years.

The demonstration wrecked the Democrat Party and helped Nixon win.

The nation survived.

But to watch the hysterical and repetitive television coverage, especially on cable, of the protesters who shut down Donald Trump's Chicago rally a week ago, one would think that democracy was teetering on the edge.

The reporting shows how shallow and uninformed the wasteland of television news reporting and commentary has become.

Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, who were not even born then, also could not resist warning of the breakup of democracy because of Trump, his rhetoric and his rally.

Compared to Chicago 1968, the anti-Trump rally would not even have made the 6 o'clock news.

Here is the difference between the Chicago demonstrations then and now.

Back then, the demonstrators had something to demonstrate for -- ending the Vietnam War. They had a cause they believed in -- some say a noble cause -- and that was to end an unjust war that was forcing drafted 18-year-old boys to go to Vietnam to fight and die.

There is no draft today. We have a volunteer army. And if these anti-Trump leftist anarchists object to what President Obama is doing, or not doing, with the military in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria or Libya, they are certainly quiet about it.

These anti-Trump demonstrators, many of whom are paid provocateurs, have no cause. They want only to deprive Trump of his free-speech and assembly rights because they do not agree with him.

They are more of a danger to democracy than Trump. Yet they may help elect him president, just as they did Nixon.

Peter Lucas' political column appears Tuesday and Friday. Email him at luke1825@aol.com.

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